The Global Game

Why You Should Root for Nigeria (or Brazil, Mexico or Ghana)

Most of the world considers soccer’s quadrennial World Cup to be the most important sporting competition of all. A growing number of Americans have embraced the event, but many are only vaguely aware of it, and, aside from the United States, not so sure for whom to root.

I am offering an alternative, utilitarian guide to help Americans choose a country to support. This guide can also be used if the Americans are eliminated, to help decide whom to root for among the remaining teams.

Photo

Nigerian soccer fans in Rio de Janeiro after a missed scoring opportunity against Iran last week in the World Cup. There's a case to be made that Nigerians would get the most joy from a World Cup title.Credit
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The basic principle is simple, drawn from utilitarian principles: Root for the outcome that will produce the largest aggregate increase in happiness. So I came up with a simple index, calculated by a country’s passion for soccer multiplied by its average level of poverty multiplied by its population. It’s perhaps a bit crude, simply to multiply these factors by each other, but the exercise highlights some important truths about the world.

Why this formula? Considering soccer interest seems obvious enough — the more passionate fans are, the happier they’ll be if their team emerges victorious. I incorporate poverty into the score for several reasons. First, happiness and wealth are correlated, and all else being equal, a utilitarian would prefer to help the person who is worst off. Second, the wealthy have more outlets for dealing with sports disappointments — such as going out to a nice meal — and can bounce back faster.

Finally, if we are to embrace the utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, we need to think about the population of the countries in question. While Uruguayans undoubtedly love soccer, it will be a nation of only 3.3 million people celebrating their triumph should Uruguay come out on top. In contrast, if neighboring Argentina wins, it will mean a celebration for 42.7 million.

An Economist's Guide to World Cup Rooting: The Leaders

Dean Karlan, a Yale economist, has calculated a score for each World Cup team, based on its population, poverty level and interest in soccer. He argues a Nigeria championship would bring the most aggregate happiness.

Index for top country set to equal 100.

Nigeria

Brazil

Mexico

Russia

Iran

Ivory Coast

Colombia

Ghana

Algeria

Cameroon

100

54

21

20

18

14

12

11

11

10

Index for top country set to equal 100.

Nigeria

Brazil

Mexico

Russia

Iran

Ivory Coast

Colombia

Ghana

Algeria

Cameroon

100

54

21

20

18

14

12

11

11

10

Dean Karlan, Innovations for Poverty Action

The first challenge is measuring a country’s passion for soccer. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Ghana was more invested in its match with the United States than the United States. Ghana shut down factories and imported electricity from neighboring Ivory Coast to make sure that the power grid would support all households watching the match. To quantify such passion, I turned to Google Trends and looked at how soccer compared with the other most popular sports in each country, based on searches. While soccer accounts for 16 percent of searches about top sports in the United States, the share is a stunning 85 percent in Colombia.

Some countries considered big soccer nations did unexpectedly poorly by this measure. For instance, we know Germans love soccer, but they also have a soft spot for team handball (which got almost half as many searches as soccer). The region with the highest appetite for soccer? Africa, with Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast all finishing in the top six (the other two most soccer-crazed countries are Brazil and Ecuador).

Notably, these results are broadly similar to those from a recent Upshot study of public opinion in 19 World Cup countries, conducted by YouGov. In that study, Colombians showed more interest in the sport than people in any other country, and several European countries had a larger share of the population not interested in soccer than many Americans might imagine. Only 20 percent of German respondents said they were “very interested” in the sport, compared with 50 percent in Colombia. (Because of low Internet access, no African countries were included in the study.)

An Economist's Guide to World Cup Rooting: The Laggards

Dean Karlan, a Yale economist, has calculated a score for each World Cup
team, based on its population, poverty level and interest in soccer. He
argues a championship for most European teams would not create much aggregate happiness.

Index for top country (Nigeria) set to equal 100.

Italy

England

Argentina

Ecuador

France

Honduras

Spain

Chile

Japan

Portugal

Germany

Costa Rica

Greece

South Korea

Uruguay

Croatia

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Netherlands

Belgium

Switzerland

United States

Australia

4.9

4.8

4.8

3.8

2.8

2.7

2.7

2.0

1.9

1.7

1.4

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.6

0.6

0.5

0.5

0.3

0.1

0.1

0.0

Index for top country (Nigeria) set to equal 100.

Italy

England

Argentina

Ecuador

France

Honduras

Spain

Chile

Japan

Portugal

Germany

Costa Rica

Greece

South Korea

Uruguay

Croatia

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Netherlands

Belgium

Switzerland

United States

Australia

4.9

4.8

4.8

3.8

2.8

2.7

2.7

2.0

1.9

1.7

1.4

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.6

0.6

0.5

0.5

0.3

0.1

0.1

0.0

Dean Karlan, Innovations for Poverty Action

So which country comes out on top of our utilitarian ranking? Nigeria, which advanced out of group play Wednesday. Nigeria finishes fourth in our passion ranking, and is one of the poorest countries in the tournament. Separating it from the rest of the African countries in the World Cup is its huge population — 174 million people. Simply put, the Nigerians have a lot of very passionate, low-income people who are ready to celebrate Nigerian success. Nigeria finishes with a far higher score than any other country.

After Nigeria come Brazil, Mexico, and Ghana — all countries with large populations and plenty of passion for the game. Brazil and Mexico have advanced to the second round, while Ghana must beat Portugal on Thursday; hope for the United States to lose to Germany; and then prevail via one of the tiebreakers.

And how does the United States do? The good news is that we don’t finish last. We do finish last in fan passion. Along with Japan, South Korea and Australia, we are one of only four World Cup nations where soccer is not the most-searched sport. But we’re helped out by our big population and, over all, finish slightly ahead of Australia.

What’s the bigger lesson from this? As a development economist, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to create the most good with limited resources. As part of this work, I recently led a class on charitable giving. The students analyzed some domestic charities, but mostly international ones. Although they found some domestic charities that were doing important and seemingly effective work, their analysis was unambiguous: If they were giving strictly out of altruism with utilitarian principles, they could have a bigger impact by sending money to developing-country charities. The needs are far greater, and the cost of helping is much lower.

Often I hear people argue against the idea of framing charitable giving as a choice. But that would make sense only if someone invented a magic dollar bill that could help two charities at once. Ultimately, life is full of choices. Just as we can’t have more than one winner of the World Cup, we also cannot send the same dollar to two different organizations. We must choose. So let’s choose the ones that will have the biggest impact.

Dean Karlan is an economics professor at Yale and the founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, which looks for and promotes cost-effective solutions to poverty. Nate Barker, a researcher with the group, helped compile the data for this article.

A version of this article appears in print on June 26, 2014, on Page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Why You Should Root for Nigeria (or Maybe Brazil). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe